More houses - less roads

[scrooge]

I would like to see a feature in OTTD to build more houses in each city on same amount of area. The lack of flexibility in roads (left-right, up-down) should be made up in more houses: now the houses have to be built next to a road, but I think it should be possible to build two rows of houses at each side of a road. That would mean 4x4 squares of houses instead of max 2x2.
There could also be open areas in the middle (new graphics would be needed for that I think), like parks and playgrounds for children.

Now, what do you think?

[JimboTG]

A grand idea, nothing is more insulting to the eye than a single green square in the middle of sprawling metropolis, ok maybe jo brand naked but other than that yuk! but I think the whole growtown/expandtown should be reworked anyway.

[MrPrise]

In connection to the topic I agree the game needs a better map generator.
What is annoying me when there are different heights in a city at the start of the city.
I like if the city is flat or mostly flat.
So I think this can be fix if the map generator flatten the land around the city.
Of course it is also a good think if the towns level the land when they grow at least the small differences like one or two squares water, hills.
So what I don't like if there are a lot of small changes in the heigths.

[Born Acorn]

I would agree a rewrite of the map generation is in order, perhaps even optimised so it loads larger maps quicker.

It could do with more options, like map type (Islands, Continents, big landmass, big lake etc), the largeness of towns and the default industry production, and perhaps a checkbox to connect all towns by road.

Of course, its no small thing and would take time.

[Scia]

Great idea's! Just think about a mapgenerator that could generate a game with a large capital city where all kinds of activities are concentrated and on a regional scale, smaller capitals with also a concentration of activities. And then the rural areas where raw materials are gathered (farms and mines). Maybe the type of industry that is allowed for a town is dependent on the population of a city (or even better = region)...

[Bob Smith]

I agree that the towns could be a bit more intelligent when building roads. Roundabouts with a house in the middle always look funny.

[RMJ]

There should also be an options so that there arent so many places to deliver cargo. so insulting to see like 1forrest and 3 sawmills without a radius of 15squares...

[Wolf01]

an idea should be to allow cities to build roads with specific layouts, 4 ex. grids of 2*2, 3*2, 3*3 etc... so i don't have to wait for the local authority to raise to make a perfect grid

this way all cities in the map should use the same layout in all map, like you have drawed roads in the editor, placed cities and then removed unused roads, this to avoid non aligned grids

[MeusH]

static bool IsRoadAllowedHere(TileIndex tile, int dir)

Code: Select all

			// Disallow the road if any neighboring tile has a road.
			if (HASBIT(GetTownRoadMask(TILE_ADD(tile, ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+1]))), dir^2) ||
					HASBIT(GetTownRoadMask(TILE_ADD(tile, ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+3]))), dir^2) ||
					HASBIT(GetTownRoadMask(TILE_ADD(tile, ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+1]) + ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+2]))), dir) ||
					HASBIT(GetTownRoadMask(TILE_ADD(tile, ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+3]) + ToTileIndexDiff(_roadblock_tileadd[dir+2]))), dir))
				return false;

I wanted to enchance city to make at least 2x2 roads, but first I've got to understand this, then code... I'd say this code is really tricky